Too late
by Rice Buny
Summary: Load the magazine. Cock the slide. Aim the pistol. Pull the trigger. It's a never ending cycle. Wash off the blood. Rinse. Repeat. Clementine is used to this. However, for the first time in years, did her arm tremble, did her aim go wry, and did tears streak down her blood stained face, she had trouble yanking back the trigger. And it's definitely not the pistol's fault.


So um.

Disclaimers: I do not own any of the characters of The Walking Dead.

HOLY CRAP I HAVE AN IDEA

So in Code Geass, there's this thing called Project Orange, what happens if it's Clementine, because her name is a brand of orange? Yeah. I don't know. Sighs. Nevermind. Forget I ever typed that.

* * *

Load the magazine. Cock the slide. Aim the pistol. Pull the trigger. It's a never ending cycle. Wash off the blood. Rinse. Repeat. Clementine is used to this. However, for the first time in months, did her arm tremble, did her aim go wry, and did tears streak down her blood stained face, she had trouble pulling the trigger. And it's definitely not the pistol's fault.

The bullet didn't plunge deep into the skull of the walker. Rather, is pierces the soft flesh of the shoulder, tearing through the fabric that covered it. Clementine grips the handle of her pistol, sighing. She has to hurry. She has to kill this walker now. of course, irony has to tap her on the shoulder and remind her of this one walker she left behind. She couldn't kill him when she was younger. She can't do it now after a year. Clementine inhales deeply. The gunshot probably attracted every walker within five miles. She hesitates, when she gently presses the barrel of the pistol to the soft, ashen temple of the man that took her in for years. His once, deep, solemn toffee eyes just two bright, pearly orbs in their bruising sockets. His face gaunt, his whole frame thin. Clementine digs her teeth into the bottom of her lip, and with the back of her hand, she tries to wipe away the tears, only to successfully streak the tears across her dusty face. Clementine sighs, her hazel eyes, the beautiful combination of jade and amber, peer out from under her thick eyelashes. She hesitates, and lifts the pistol away.

She has to kill him now. He basically pleaded for her to kill him, with his wheezy, raspy, tone, peering at her from eyes partly covered by his sinking eyelids. But she didn't. She just left him to turn. He helped her throughout all these months, and yet, at the end, she disobeyed him twice, leaving him hurting, twice. Yet, Clementine's unable to gather the courage to yank the trigger back and blow the brains out the back of her former friend's head. The walker groans at her, and Clementine observes the walker, who resembles so much as her older friend, yet, now, he's a reincarnated monster. This reanimated creature isn't him, Clementine has to constantly remind herself. Yet, despite the obvious differences, she knows that this is the body of him, and that's enough to cause her arm to lower. The clothes that Clementine last saw him in still hangs limply from his frame, surprisingly untarnished and slightly clean. Then, her eyes travel to the clanking that causes her to cringe. The handcuffs still work, one end clipped around a bar of a radiator, and the other tightly locked around the wrist of his diseased wrist. She has to get over him. She has to.

Clementine recalls when she was younger, wearing her musty purple flats and tights, the frills sewn to the edge of her shirt billowing whenever she bounces high enough. The vase that once smacked across his head is still there on the ground, collecting dust. The baseball bat, one side of the wooden rod stained with the crimson liquid, now dried into the bat. The dead walker she cracked the bat at is still limp on the ground, splayed across the floor. How did she end up back here?

"Clem?" Clementine swivels around, to face AJ, who peers up at her with his dark brown eyes. The same color as the man that cared for Clementine. At that realization, a lump forms in Clementine's throat, burning there, wanting her to start spitting tears out of her eyes and vomit all the cries and wails that she held in the moment she entered this accursed building. Clementine forces the lump of tears back down her throat, swallowing it.

"Yeah?" Clementine cringes at how hoarse her voice sounded.

"Are you almost done?" AJ asks curiously, wobbling over on his feet. Clementine remembers telling Katjaa that she was in first grade when shit hit the fan. Yet here's Alvin Junior, born into it, and surviving for three years and counting. He has surprisingly good articulation for a three-year old. "Why isn't he dead?" AJ jerks a stubby finger at the walker, feebly scowling and trying to scrabble onto his feet, yet still shackled to the radiator. "Do you want me to do it?" AJ asks curiously. Clementine recoils at how nonchalant he talks.

"Killing is bad no matter what," Clementine crouches down on a knee, sending the same words that he told her when she was younger and oblivious. "I'll do it," Clementine reassures AJ, who waddles into the room where Clementine walked into years ago, to retrieve a gun and keys from the guard lodged in its chair.

Clementine, this time, with a firm grip on her pistol, jerks the trigger back, and the walker's head snaps back as the bullet plunges deep into its skull. The walker collapses, his skull clanking against the radiator that he was chained to. Copper blood slowly coats one of the bars of the radiator.

There's no reason for Clementine to say goodbye. There's not reason for Clementine to say 'thank you'. There's no reason for her to beg for forgiveness or thank him. Because Lee left a long time ago, and the only time she could've said those things and end his suffering was four years ago, before he left. And she missed her chance and left him for something worse than death.

* * *

Yeah. That's basically it. This is a one shot and it's going to remain that way.


End file.
